Running ebook-convert from php

[conryf]

Hello,

I'm trying to run ebook-convert from php using the exec command. I think it's a permission problem. I made www-data the owner of /usr/bin/ebook-convert and it is the user of all the relevant files, all with permission 755. Any idea why I can't run this from php?

[itimpi]

Do you have things like the search path set up correctly when run from php so that Calibre can find all its constituent parts?

[conryf]

well the php code is:

exec("ebook-convert book.txt book.epub");

I ran it from the command line and it say there is a permissions error writing to the directory. The directory has permissions 755 and is owned by www-data, which is the user php runs as.

If I change the permission to 777, I can get it to work, but only from command line, if I run the page in a browser I get the same permissions error even when the relevant files are 777!

How could you get a permissions errro when the directory is 777!? I'm baffled.

[kovidgoyal]

check the permissions on you're temp directory and the calibre config directory (~/.config/calibre) Use the environment variable CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY to control that

[conryf]

I changed all the permission in ~/.config/calibre but where do I find what calibre is using as the temp directory?

[conryf]

I can run the ebook-convert command from comand line and even run

php convert_test.php

with the following results:

PHP Deprecated:  Comments starting with '#' are deprecated in /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/imap.ini on line 1 in Unknown on line 0
PHP Deprecated:  Comments starting with '#' are deprecated in /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/mcrypt.ini on line 1 in Unknown on line 0
ebook-convert content/Fiction/Multi-Cultural/Celtic_Fairy_Tales.txt Celtic_Fairy_Tales.epub1% Converting input to HTML...
InputFormatPlugin: TXT Input running
on /var/www/content/Fiction/Multi-Cultural/Celtic_Fairy_Tales.txt
InputFormatPlugin: HTML Input running
on /var/www/content/Fiction/Multi-Cultural/temp_calibre_txt_input_to_html.html
Language not specified
Creator not specified
Title not specified
Building file list...
Forcing temp_calibre_txt_input_to_html.html into XHTML namespace
34% Running transforms on ebook...
Merging user specified metadata...
Detecting structure...
Auto generated TOC with 0 entries.
Flattening CSS and remapping font sizes...
Source base font size is 12.00000pt
Cleaning up manifest...
Trimming unused files from manifest...
Creating EPUB Output...
67% Creating EPUB Output
	Looking for large trees in temp_calibre_txt_input_to_html.html...
	No large trees found
Generating default cover
EPUB output written to /var/www/Celtic_Fairy_Tales.epub
Output saved to   /var/www/Celtic_Fairy_Tales.epub
<br>ret_val=0<br><br>OK

where convert_test is the following

$command = 'ebook-convert content/Fiction/Multi-Cultural/Celtic_Fairy_Tales.txt Celtic_Fairy_Tales.epub';

echo $command;
if( system($command , $ret_val) )
{
echo "<br>ret_val=$ret_val<br>";
echo '<br>OK';
}
else
{
    echo '<br>fail';
}

But I can't do it from a browser, (ie from apache). The return value of system is false. No other output. Any ideas?

[conryf]

OK, I think I've solved this problem on my own.

Calibre was running in /var/www and was trying to create a directory /var/www/.config. However I was the owner of /var/www, not apache. If I ran it from commandline I assume it used the .config in my home directory, but when apache ran it (as www-data on ubuntu) is was trying (and failing) to create /var/www/.config.

When I changed the owner of /var/www/ to www-data it worked fine.

Thanks everyone for all their help.

[itimpi]

That suggests that you could also have solved the problem by setting the CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY to point to the Calibre config directory in your home folder.